Recliners are generally well known in the furniture industry. The term recliner is used throughout this description to describe articles of furniture that include a reclining mechanism. Generally recliners are chairs that allow the user to recline and are equipped with extendable footrests. Recliners are often in the form of a plush chair, however, they might also take the form of an oversized seat, a seat-and-a-half, a love seat, a sofa, a sectional, and the like. Recliners are known in both a manual configuration (where the user releases the reclining mechanism from a closed position to a TV position, and moves the reclining mechanism from the TV position to a full recline position) and a motorized version (where a motor is used to move the mechanism between the various positions).
The reclining motion is achieved in recliners with a linkage mechanism that is coupled to a base. The linkage mechanisms found in recliners in the art include a plurality of interconnected links that provide one or more mechanisms for extending a footrest, reclining the recliner, and obstructing movements of the chair when in specific orientations. Typically, recliners known in the art provide three positions: an upright seated position with the footrest retracted beneath the chair (the “closed position”); a television viewing position in which the chair back is slightly reclined but still provides a generally upright position with the footrest extended (the “TV position”), and a full-recline position in which the chair back is reclined an additional amount farther than in the TV position but still generally inclined with respect to the seat of the chair and with the footrest extended (the “fully reclined position”).
These types of prior art recliner mechanisms, while functional, suffer from a number of drawbacks. One of which includes a problem known as shirt pull. Shirt pull occurs as the user reclines the back of the chair, and the chair back rotates back, but also away from the seat, increasing the distance between the bottom of the back cushion and the back of the seat cushion. This movement not only results in shirt pull, but also removes support from the lower lumbar area of the user seated in the chair. In some cases, a gap may form between the seat cushion and the back cushion resulting in discomfort to the user seated in the chair. This motion is caused by a back bracket pivot point that is typically below and behind the point where the chair back cushion and the seat cushion meet. It would be desirable to provide a recliner, whether manual or motorized, having a back pivot point projected to as close as possible to the point at which the bottom of the back cushion and the back of the seat cushion meet.
Further, recliners typically move forward when changing from the closed position to the TV position, and from the TV position to the fully reclined position to accommodate the reclining of the back and the shifting of the center of gravity of the recliner and the user seated therein. Moreover, in order to provide as much wall clearance as possible, recliners have moved forward as much as possible. Recliners known in the art have a minimum wall clearance of 4.5 inches in order to fully move between the closed position, the TV position, and the fully reclined position. The amount of wall clearance is limited principally by two factors, the angle relative to a base rail of front and rear pivot links in the closed position and the arcs about which they may travel and the length of the front and back pivot links. In the closed position, known pivot links are set at an angle just forward of normal to the base rail. This allows gravity to assist the user of the chair to move from the closed position to the TV position. It would be desirable to provide a recliner having a wall clearance less than 4.5 inches, and as small as possible, to allow the user as much freedom as possible when positioning the recliner in a room.